FX’s Brilliant Welcome to Wrexham Is a Sports Doc Where Ambition and Humor Collide

“I’m a painter now, twelve, fifteen years,” says Shaun, a lifelong Wrexham resident and Wrexham A.F.C. supporter. “Me graddad was a painter, me dad’s a painter… and I fucking hate it.”

This moment, early in the second episode of the new FX half-hour documentary series Welcome to Wrexham, has very little to do with the plot, which is why I feel comfortable quoting it verbatim. It could have been left on the cutting room floor without detracting even a little from the narrative arc. What it accomplishes, though, is twofold. First, it’s another great bit of local color in a show that thrives on these moments. Second, it’s avowedly unsentimental, a surprisingly common approach in a work that theoretically lends itself to sentiment.

The 18-episode Wrexham is the story of Rob McElhenney (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) and Ryan Reynolds buying a Welsh soccer club that has fallen on hard times with the dream of bringing them, and the town, back to prominence. Why are they doing this? The question is addressed often, but only answered obliquely. McElhenney is from working class Philadelphia, a lifelong Eagles fan, and feels like he can relate to what a team means to people like him, and those in working class Wrexham. And Reynolds… well, Reynolds has movie-star money, and McElhenney needed him. It’s surely about the making of this docuseries, of course, but there’s something refreshing about the fact that nobody is attempting to wring pathos out of the project. There is at least a part of the motivation that’s left mysterious (as of the first four episodes reviewed)—McElhenney and Reynolds have never been to Wrexham, they don’t seem to particularly like soccer very much, and before this, they had never even met each other in person. The connections, the desires, are tenuous, subtle, and never quite made explicit.

The beauty is, it works wonderfully. McElhenney and Reynolds know it’s about money, the price of things is discussed often, they sack the team’s coach and 10 of its players almost immediately—many of whom, we’re told, will struggle to find the next stop in their careers afterward—and despite the fact that this is a creative investment, they also want to make money eventually. There’s nothing cynical about the show, but nor is this a gawpy real-life Ted Lasso with clockwork tearjerker scenes. And somehow, this direct, honest approach makes the whole production more affecting than it might otherwise be.

I’ll admit to a little bias here—as a McElhenney fan and a sports fan, the concept of him buying an English soccer team in dire straits and trying to lift them up is a formula that seems almost tailored to my interests. Coming into the experience, I couldn’t envision a scenario where this review would be remotely negative. Still, though my instincts were proved right, they managed to surprise me with the product itself. Every documentary is manipulative—the editors put the material together in a way to advance their own narrative interests and heighten emotional impact—but this one feels almost rigorously honest in its depiction of people and reality both in America and Wales.

There, life is tough, and the people are hard-bitten with a humor to match. From Shaun the painter (who greeted the prospect of this Hollywood takeover with the following sentiment: “Fuck off! It’s never going to happen”) to Wayne, the delightfully gossipy owner of the pub where the biggest fans congregate, the locals are depicted as funny and kind, but not the least bit tender. When Shaun tells a friend at the pub that his wife has just left him, the friend laughs and says, “have you got any tissues for him here?”

“It’s a fucking emotional time in me life, this is!” says Shaun, smiling right back and taking a sip of his pint.